Jon Jost

A Paul Joyce documentary on the American independent film scene.

Teenage London is trying to find meaning in the world, or a leather jacket of her own. Unaccepted by neither the Mods or the Asian biker gang, she tries to find her own path. Meanwhile, the two gangs maintain a mutual vendetta sure to erupt in a smorgasbord of violence.

Perhaps at first glance, the filmography of Silvio Narizzano appears unremarkable. Thanks to his sleeper hit Georgy Girl (1966), he's known largely as a "one-hit wonder" director. Upon closer inspection, however, likely no other filmmaker used cinema as effectively to exorcise personal demons in ways both ugly and beautiful. And few directors' sensibilities were more gay, both overtly and covertly. Film historian Daniel Kremer is your tour guide through an obscure, perplexing body of work heretofore ignored and often unfairly shunned. Cruel, Usual, Necessary: The Passion of Silvio Narizzano is an essay documentary of discovery.

A scathing portrait of the Hollywood/LA arts milieu of the late 70’s, Chameleon follows the amorphous day of its lead character, an Armani-jacketed peddler of high-class dope, fraudulent art, and preening postures suited-to-fit the changing victims, though as with all such fakery, the real victim in the long run is the person who lives such a life.

As night falls, the receptionist of a small hotel dutifully performs her routine tasks while strange lodgers descend upon the dark corners of the inn.

This film is a record of the first Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival. It reflects the various ways the festival was given shape by nascent global changes embodied by Perestroika, the Tiananmen Square massacre, and many other contemporaneous events.

A bluesy lyrical romance of two ugly-ducklings who meet on the Golden Gate Bridge and after a brief and awkward courtship, live together with the usual problems of money and work, take flight to an illusory freedom on the road, and dances inexorably to a drab doom.

Caveh gets stoned. Jon Jost doesn't.

Empire Prairie, where Lonnie Enright grew up. He's headed home now, to see his ailing father and little brother. Bad things are coming.

A film that Jon Jost dedicated to his daughter Clara, an artistically designed home movie and at the same time a look back at his life, mostly commented off-screen by Jon Jost. He used the technology of the digital camera which contrasts nicely with his newly discovered love for watercolor painting.

A young draft resister finds peace and love in the country, but his solution to the problems of the city may very well be a naive dream.